Centre for Internet and Society

Rahul Cherian passes away

praskrishna — 2013-02-10T04:27:13Z

Rahul Cherian, an expert and policy activist in disability law, intellectual property (IP) law and technology law passed away on Thursday. He was 39.

This was published in the Hindu on February 8, 2013.

Rahul passed away while on a family holiday in Goa. The 1998 National Law University Bangalore graduate succumbed to an infection after several days in intensive care. Together with fellow Law alumnus Sachin Malhan, had Cherian co-founded Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy in October 2009, as an NGO supporting stakeholders and public bodies about laws and policies affecting persons with disabilities.

As head of policy initiatives at Inclusive Planet, he was involved in drafting the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being agreed upon by the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva.

Rahul Cherian was also a fellow at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a legal expert on the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s panel on disability laws, and an advisor to several government initiatives related to the disability sector.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-february-8-2013-rahul-cherian-passes-away

Querying Wikipedia Data

pavanaja — 2016-10-21T14:51:01Z

Recently I wrote a blog about the stub article length of Wikipedia articles. I mentioned the difference in actual number of characters and the number of bytes used to define stub articles between English and Indian language Wikipedias. One can open any language Wikipedia, type Special:ShortPages in the search box to get the list of articles which have less than 2048 bytes.

Originally published blog can be accessed here.

However, as already mentioned in that blog, the number of bytes for Indian languages to be considered as stub should be actually 2048*3 = 6144 bytes employing the same criteria. How to find the list of articles fulfilling this condition?

This brings us to the topic of querying Wikipedia data. Wikimedia Foundation Labs has put up a website wherein one can run SQL queries on Wikimedia data. The URL of the website is quarry.wmflabs.org. When we open the website, we get a textbox wherein one can type the SQL query which will run on Wikimedia data. In this example I will consider Wikipedia only. But the queries can be run on the data of other Wikimedia projects like Wikisource, Wikidata, Wiktionary, etc.

One has to login with his/her Wikimedia login. After logging the SQL query can be typed in the textbox and the Submit Query button has to be clicked. The result of execution of the query on Wikimedia data will be displayed. In this blog I will throw more light on Kannada Wikipedia. The database for Kannada Wikipedia is called knwiki_p. Complete list of databases can be obtained by running the SQL query “show databases”.

To get the list of tables in Kannada Wikipedia, the following SQL queries have to be executed:

use knwiki_p;
show tables;

To know the scheme of any table, run the query desc <tablename>;. For example, to know the details of the table by name, issue the query desc page;. The fields which are of importance in the current case is page_title and page_len. The following query will list all articles in Kannada Wikipedia which are having less than 6144 bytes.

use knwiki_p;
select page_title, page_len
from page where page_len < ‘6144’ and page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect = 0 order by page_len ;

Some other useful queries are listed below:

Query	What it does
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0;	Number of articles without redirect
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0 and page_len < 6144;	Number of articles which are having bytes less than 6144
select * from user where user_name Like “P%”;	List all users whose username starts with letter “P”
select user_id, user_name, user_editcount from user where user_editcount >3000 order by user_editcount desc;	List all users with editcount more than 3000
SELECT page_namespace, page_title, page_len FROM page WHERE page_len > 175000 AND page_title NOT LIKE “%/%” ORDER BY page_namespace ASC;	List of long articles (articles having bytes more than 175000)
SELECT rc_title as title, rc_comment as comments, count(*) as Edits FROM recentchanges WHERE rc_namespace = 0 GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 3 DESC LIMIT 100;	Most edited 100 pages during past one month
SELECT log_title, COUNT() FROM logging WHERE log_type=”thanks” GROUP BY log_title ORDER BY COUNT() DESC LIMIT 100;	Who have been thanked most

Useful links -

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/querying-wikipedia-data

Putting women human rights activists on the world map

Admin — 2018-05-20T14:09:17Z

Birubala Rabha may be a household name in Assam, but her crusade against the practice of witch-hunting in her State has not got the attention it deserves from the nation or the world. Barring a handful of articles in print and online publications, little has been written about her fight that spans over two decades. There is no mention of her on Wikipedia.

The article by Sarumathi K. was published in the Hindu on May 19, 2018.

Like Ms. Rabha, India has seen many women human rights activists who have taken up cudgels on behalf of the marginalised and oppressed, but their stories have remained mostly muted. “Sadly women are marginalised even in the online space. There is no mention of these brave women in the more than five-and-a-half million English entries on the Wikipedia website. In fact, less than 20% of the biographies on Wikipedia are dedicated to women, with few devoted to the important work of human rights defenders, and even fewer to women human rights defenders,” said Leah Verghese, senior campaigner and researcher, Amnesty International India.

To take stories of such women to the world, Amnesty International, Bengaluru, is working in collaboration with Wikimedia Foundation to put out profiles of women human rights defenders in the country on Wikipedia. The technical support is being extended by Centre for Internet and Society. “A few women have a brief profile; we will be updating them. For those who have none, we will create new ones,” said Ms. Verghese.

The project, called Brave: EDIT, will take shape with the help of volunteers, mostly college students from Bengaluru, who will compile and upload profiles of women human rights defenders such as Tongam Rina, Jagmati Sangwan, Manjula Pradeep, Aruna Sanghapali, Pavitri Manji and Birubala Rabha, among others. This project is being simultaneously executed in 20 other countries.

“We have created a list of 24 such women activists who have worked in the field of human rights in India. Though the list was much longer, there are some Wikipedia criteria, including notability and verifiability of the people being written about, which led us to bring the number down to 24,” said Ms. Verghese.

The volunteers have been working on the project on weekends and the profiles are likely to be available on Wikipedia in a week.

Manuja Pradeep, Dalit human rights activist from Gujarat and executive director of Navsarjan Trust, who is on the list of women being profiled, said, “The visibility on the Internet is very important for activists, especially women activists. Most of us have spent over two decades on the ground, working for the marginalised community and this entry in Wikipedia is a big recognition for our work.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindu-sarumathi-k-may-19-2018-putting-women-human-rights-activists-on-the-world-map

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs

Sanjana Govil — 2012-01-26T17:11:29Z

While entrepreneurs, IP rights-holders and everyone else who has a stake continue to voice their opinions on the appropriate shape that the Indian IP regime ought to take, they tend to narrow their discussions to the language of substantive IP laws. However, there are regulations that cannot be found in the Patent Act, Copyright Act or Trademarks Act which nevertheless have an impact on how much one is paying for intellectual property. Paying attention to these external factors might just provide a simple solution to your IP woes.

One such factor is the regulation of foreign technology agreements. A foreign technology agreement is an agreement under which a transfer of technology occurs from a foreign source to an Indian entity. This transfer may include anything from the creation of an Indian wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign parent company to the transfer of manufacturing or design know-how.

Regulation of these agreements in India is carried out by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as well as the Reserve Bank of India. In 1991, the Ministry’s Department of Industrial Development (DID) released Press Note No.10 which stated the following:

“39 C. Foreign Technology Agreements

i) Automatic permission will be given for foreign technology agreements in high priority industries (Annex III)* upto a lumpsum payment of Rs. 1 crore, 5% royalty for domestic sales and 8% for exports, subject to total payments of 8% of sales over a 10 year period from date of agreement or 7 years from commencement of production. The prescribed royalty rates are net of taxes and will be calculated according to standard procedures."

As a consequence, automatic approval could only be granted to high priority industries whose royalty payments fell within the prescribed limits. In every other case, the approval of the Secretariat of Industrial Approvals (SIA), DID and the RBI had to be sought. It must be noted that in theory this regulation did not place an absolute ban on royalty outflows above the 5% and 8% ceilings since the possibility of securing government approval for the same did exist. However, considering that a mere 8062 approvals were granted between 1991 and 2009[1], the ceiling was in effect almost absolute.

It appears that the stance of the government of the time was one of strict regulation. From the perspective of Indian entrepreneurs, shareholders and consumers, this was a good thing. To illustrate, imagine a foreign company which manufactures a networked camera cell phone. The company will be paying royalties for several of its features such as the camera, USB port, operating system, etc. This company then sets up a subsidiary in India to manufacture the same phones. Though the total royalties being paid by the parent company are likely to far exceed five per cent of its sales, it cannot charge the subsidiary royalties above this ceiling. Therefore, the costs for the Indian subsidiary reduce significantly. This reduction will be reflected in an increased dividend for shareholders and a reduced cost for consumers.

While the benefits of this royalty ceiling are manifold, it is evident that foreign rights-holders are adversely affected. Therefore, the Government has, unfortunately, gradually “liberalized” its approach towards royalty payments over the years. First the 7 or 10 year duration restrictions were done away with and next the lump sum ceiling was increased from Rs.1 crore to USD 2 million. Ultimately, the ceiling was removed altogether through the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Press Note No.8 of 2009 in the name of liberalization. The adverse impacts on Indian manufacturers were almost immediate as foreign rights-holders began to revise their license agreements.[2]]

Why was this ceiling introduced in the first place? Some say it was due to the acute balance of payments deficit that existed in the country in 1991[3]; when India found itself overspending on imported oil. This urged the government at the time to ensure that foreign collaboration in the private sector was well regulated. Since then, the balance of payments situation in India has comparatively stabilized (though a deficit still does exist[4]) and so there appears to be no immediate need to continue to regulate foreign technology collaboration. However, one can’t help but remember Mark Getty’s prediction that intellectual property will be the "oil of the twenty-first century".[5]

Notes

[1] F. Bureaus, “Tech Transfer, Royalty Payment Norms Eased”, Financial Express (November 6, 2009) available at <http://www.financialexpress.com/news/tech-transfer-royalty-payment-norms-eased/537816/

[2]http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html">http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html>.

[3]K. Sen, “News on Royalty Payment Brings Cheer in New Year”, Business Standard (January 4, 2010) available at <

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/newsroyalty-payment-brings-cheer-in-new-year/381521/>

[4]http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165">http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165>.

[5]http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php">http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows

Pushing women scientists

praskrishna — 2014-10-21T15:44:09Z

Wikipedia edit-a-thon attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of Indian women to science.

The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on October 19, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Ask anyone to name an Indian scientist and the answer is likely to be a man, and not a woman scientist. To let more people know about the unsung heroines of science in India, a workshop called the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 was held here recently. At least 15 participants added content about women scientists over two days to Wikipedia as the first step in bringing public awareness about them.

The edit-a-thon (a large number of people adding or modifying content on Wikipedia at once) concluded on October 14, which was Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology and maths. The event was organised by BioScienceIndia Programme, a non-profit science outreach initiative, and Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Participants added information about at least 40 women scientists. Information on 80 more would be added in a year’s time, said Nandini Rajamani, Co-director, BioScienceIndia Programme.

The aim, however, is to go beyond edit-a-thons, to examine issues that have not received the attention they deserve. Women scientists in India are not on par with men for several reasons (see info box) and the “leaky pipeline” theory is used to describe their decreasing visibility. Vishnu Vardhan, Director, Access to Knowledge team, CIS, said the aim is to motivate a new and younger generation of women scientists.

Karthik Ramaswamy, visiting scientist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and a participant in the edit-a-thon, said science in India has a ‘diversity problem’ with Indian women and minorities represented inadequately. “There are very few women scientists among faculty of science institutions because they have no role models. Hopefully, this (presence on Wikipedia) will provide them with role models,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T11:16:06Z

Sunil Abraham is quoted. He said that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

This post originally appeared on the Open Data Research Network and has been republished with permission from the author. For the republished post on OGP website, see here.

The plenary room of Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center was jam-packed at 845 in the morning, with representatives from different countries in the Asia-Pacific region and all over the globe joining the first regional conference on open data hosted by the Government of Indonesia. The conference stage backdrop depicts a million colourful cranes moving in one direction towards the OGP logo, perhaps signalling an unprecedented wave of aspirations, commitments, plans, and actions towards a more ‘open’ governance within the region. Then a few minutes later, President Yudhoyono arrived and the two-day gathering (6-7 May 2014) of roughly 500 people started.

The program was impressive. It tried to cater to the different voices of what ideally should make an open government community – government leaders, journalists, right-to-information activists, business representatives, academia, researchers, civil-society groups, funding agencies, programmers, among others. The over-arching theme of the conference “Unlocking Innovative Openness: Impetus to Greater Citizen Engagement” speaks to both the supply side and the demand side of open data where governments can make openness more innovative to which citizens can proactively engage. The people in attendance reflected this multi-dimensionality and the kind of discussions on open governance that happened in Day 1 reflects the several, differentiated, yet somehow united view and interests of the many people that were there.

The first day of the conference brings me to four main realisations, prompted by the excellent presentations of the speakers and the lively discussion at the break-out session that I attended.

Openness is not an option but an imperative. Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathanaof India, and considered one of the most influential thinkers of this decade put it more vividly using her organization’s slogan – “right to know, right to live”. While bureaucrats, like Minister Francis Maude of the UK argued that openness improve transparency, enhance public service, and stimulate growth, civil society groups claimed that openness is not something the government can do, but must do, to benefit right holders by ensuring that they are not only aware of what the government is doing but by ensuring that government leaders, to whom citizens entrust sovereignty, execute the will of the governed.
Open governance is about relations, about people, not just about technology, transparency, or data provision. Ms. Nwe Zin Win, of Myanmar National NGOs Network emphasized that as Myanmar moves towards Open Government Partnership (OGP) membership, the process should create a space for civil society groups to proactively participate. In his remarks, Director General Yoon Soon-Gu of the Republic of Korea emphasized that when his government embarked on the process of crafting Gov 3.0 as a development agenda, with the end-goal of making Koreans live a happy life, citizen consultations were conducted all across government to ensure that this plan is responsive and relevant and reflects the people’s aspirations. Anne Jellema, CEO of World Wide Web Foundation highlighted the fact that open governance is not only good for vertical accountability (government-governed) but also about horizontal accountability (agencies within the same government) and ensures that systems are working with government – judiciary, legislative, audit, executing agencies – for the common good. Open governance then, is about building that relationship of trust between government and citizens, between business and government, and between agencies in the government.
Open government has many challenges, but these are not insurmountable. Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism emphasized five “I”s in her plenary speech that she said are the main challenges to the open government story in the Philippines and in the region – implementation, inclusiveness, information, institutionalisation, and interconnectedness. In the area of inclusiveness, one of the challenges is on how to ensure that people can participate in a context when there is a large digital divide, where internet penetration is low, and broadband speed is slow to a crawl. Mr. Samadhi of the Government of Indonesia emphasized that there are many examples in his country where government information is translated to accessible formats by infomediaries so that citizens without internet connection became aware, informed, and knowledgeable. In one of the coffee breaks, Redempto Parafina of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific shared to me that non-government organizations, concerned individuals, and universities translate information in the CheckmySchool portal to information materials for distribution and use by communities without internet.
Open governance narrative should focus on making governments more responsive and accountable. President Yudhoyono uses Facebook and Twitter, apart from the traditional media as text and snail mail, to listen to the demands of his constituents. The Government of New Zealand, according to Minister Peter Dunne, sets goals on basic public services as health, education, and employment and demands regular public reporting on these goals; reports that can be accessed and challenged by the people to whom the services are intended. Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society argued that open governance should not veer away from this narrative. He made an example regarding India’s Unique Identification System, where the implementation is couched within the open data narrative. He believed that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

It was a productive day. I am thankful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend the conference. One message that profoundly affected me was Aruna Roy’s exhortation at the end of her presentation – that we should make truth powerful, and that we should make power truthful.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-government-partnership-michael-canares-may-6-2014-pushing-the-boundaries-in-open-governance

PUPFIP Bill

pranesh — 2011-08-20T15:15:08Z

A new bill which tries to promote innovation through privatization of public-funded research and is unnecessary, misguided, and will prove harmful to Indian research, innovation, and will harm the interests of taxpayers and consumers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/pupfip

Punjabi Wikisource Training Workshop, Patiala

jayanta — 2018-12-08T16:08:57Z

A two-day long First Indic Wikisource Workshop training programme was organised by Punjabi Wikimedian during November 17-18th 2018 in Patiala, Punjab to better capacity of Wikisourcers both technically, and outreach and community building.

This is the second time when I met Punjabi Community. They had organized a Wikisource Workshop at Patiala specific for Punjabi Wikisource. When I reached the workshop venue, I was showing that all fifteen participants were eager to learn. The workshop event page can be viewed here.

It was scheduled from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm on November 17-18th 2018. The advantage of this present Punjabi Wikimedia Community, most of the member is coming from Punjabi Literature students. And I was surprised that two of them are so little class, Eight Standard students. This was the first Workshop happening in India about Wikisource. Prior to the event, I had prepared with all Gadgets.

The event started half an hour later than planned, as most of the participants took longer to make it to the venue. We found it difficult to demonstrate the examples. The biggest challenge was not a technical one, but connecting with the audience. We ended up lecturing less and demonstrating more. I started with a small introduction to Wikisource with details What is Wikisource & What is the aim of the Wikisource and Indic Wikisource Stats explanation.

After introduction I explained and demonstrated the workflow of Wikisource, adding text, finding the source, basic copyright checking, creating Index pages, OCRed the page, Proofreading, layout with typography, Validation, Transclusion and Finishing touch. Then I was demonstrated Character Insert Tool: with Gadget-charinsert. After watching this all the participants were so happy because the proofreading will be reduced and make easy. Show the most used templates as best practice in Wikisource world.

In the workflow, we had started with uploading a file in commons and local as per copyrights status, as tool Chunked_upload and Vicuna uploader. The first day was ended with few edithon and interface change in Punjabi Wikisource.

2nd day was started with On the brighter side, there were many interesting and engaging queries from few of the participants who had already proofread pages on Wikisource. Next workflow started with creating an Index file with IndexForn.js Gadget and fill with all meta from commons and remaining data was filled by participants. Then I explained the method of OCR4Wikisource by python script and offline Tesseract OCR.

Some of the namespace and extension needed on Punjabi Wikisource I explained about Author Namespace, Publisher Namespace, Short URL Extension ticket on phabricator, Book2scrol tool needed for better pagination and Transclusion, Install/Update the "tesseract-pan" package on Tool Forge for OCR

One of the best lessons we learned from the event was that it is very important to know the audience well in advance and to structure the workshop accordingly. The participants seemed to prefer the visual editor over editing the wiki markup for proofreading.

The final achievement was every participant understand the importance of Wikisource and the last one is the best for my motivation.

"After this workshop by Jayanta Nath, I understand the significance of Wikisource and also that it is not a project which is secondary to Wikipedia."

Charan Gill (Highest contributor on Punjabi Wikipedia)

The event was a success in that it introduced the Wikisource to various ways of getting involved with the Wikimedia movement, thereby changing the perception that the only way to get involved is by proofreading online.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/punjabi-wikisource-training-workshop-patiala

Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala

Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:18:36Z

Patiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.

When the veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani agreed to come forward to spread the message of Punjabi wikipedia among Punjabi speakers it opened a way to revive and build the Punjabi Wikipedia community. Once Guglani's support was confirmed we looked for suitable places to conduct the introduction workshop for Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani himself suggested Patiala, Ludhiana, and Amritsar as the probable places to conduct the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshops. Prof. Rajinder Brar, Head of the Punjabi Department agreed to provide full support to conduct a workshop at Patiala.

About 30 participants including students and teachers attended the workshop. Guglani played a pivotal role in organizing the workshop. Shiju Alex gave ample support. The workshop began with a welcome message by Prof. Rajinder. Guglani then took the participants through a brief presentation (http://bit.ly/Rnki2r) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia. To our surprise two of the participants, Satdeep Gill and Paramjeet Singh were already aware about the Punjabi Wikipedia and they had created their accounts sometime back even though they didn't do much editing. The presence of Satdeep and Paramjeet and their previous experience with Punjabi helped us during the course of the workshop. Guglani taught one of the participants to create a user account and do the wiki editing. He showed them Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing.

This was followed by a question-answer session where the participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions. The workshop ended with a small photo session.

We are happy to share that Satdeep has become quite active after this workshop and as of now is one of the very active users in Punjabi Wikipedia. We are sure his presence will attract more Punjabi people from Patiala to Punjabi Wikipedia.

More pictures of this workshop is available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-16Aug2012

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala

Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar

Shiju Alex — 2012-10-04T16:11:34Z

After Ludhiana and Patiala we came to Amritsar, which we all know is home to the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of Sikh religion, to introduce Punjabi Wikipedia. The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012.

When we decided to conduct a Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop at Amritsar, the location was an issue. We tried to contact many institutes (mostly colleges) over phone. We couldn't get the permission. Finally, Punjabi Wikipedian G.S. Guglani directly approached the Spring Dale senior school management with the request for a space to do the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop. Spring Dale is a famous English medium school in Amritsar. The school principal, Rajiv Sharma not only agreed to host the workshop but also made arrangements to bring selected students and teachers from eight other schools in Amritsar to join the workshop. Actually this was a bonus for us since we asked just a meeting place to host our workshop but not only we got the meeting place, we got assured participation from eight other schools and the permission to use the computer lab to conduct the hands-on wiki editing session.

Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh lead the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.

The event started with a formal opening talk in Punjabi by a student of Spring Dale. The Principal of the Spring Dale Senior School Rajiv Sharma introduced the guests to the audience and briefed the participants about the workshop. Guglani took the participants through a brief presentation (http://bit.ly/Rnki2r) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia.

Few participants were invited to create user account in Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani demonstrated Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing. There was a question-answer session where participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions.

Participants asking questions in the Question-Answer session

After a short break and students and teachers gathered in the computer lab. Booklets containing Punjabi typing scheme were distributed among the participants. Guglani, Shiju, and Subha supported them with editing various articles in Punjabi. As none of the students was exposed to Punjabi typing before they took much interest to type Punjabi. We were able to see the surprise in the eyes of the students and teachers when Narayam converted the typed words to Gurumukhi Punjabi. However, all the present typing tools integrated to Punjabi Wikipedia have some issues. After getting inputs from users I logged some bugs to enhance it. Bug 1 (Phonetic keymap update), Bug 2 (My Best Keyboard update). Hope WMF developers will look into it.

At the end of the session email addresses were exchanged for future communication. New wikipedians were given pointers to stay in touch and ask questions when they face problems with editing.

This workshop involving school childern was really a very good experince for us. I would like to thank the Spring Dale Senior School management for the warm hospitality that they extended to us. We are touched. I could see the possibility of doing programs there.

After conducting three workshops for Punjabi (two workshops (Luhiana and Patiala) involving college students and one workshop (Amritsar) involving school children), I am sure there is bright future ahead for the Punjabi Wikipedia if community can come forward to build the community further. From the statistical report of last year we can see that it was only Guglani editing Punjabi Wikipedia. Now Guglaniji and Surinder came forward to build it and we have around 6-7 active users now. For a language with almost 3 crore speakers 7 active users is not an encouraging number. So we need to have more programs to build it further. Hope community will be able to come forward for that.

More pictures of this workshop is available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar

Publishing Next

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T07:50:28Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at Publishing Next organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing, a Margao (Goa)-based publishing house that provides publishing services to authors and publishers. The event was held in Goa on September 19 and 20.

For speakers click here. Read the full description on Publishing Next website.

Schedule | publishing next

Schedule

For descriptions of each session, please view this page.

19th September 2014			20th September 2014
	Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)		Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)
09:00 – 10:00	Registration of attendees		09:30 – 10:00	Insight Talk by Klaus Willberg
10:00 – 10:20	Inauguration / Address		10:00 – 11:30	A Pulse on Publishing
10:20 – 11:00	Keynote Address		11:30 – 12:00	Tea
11:00 – 11:20	Tea		12:00 – 13:15	Worse Off Without Verse?	Physical Distribution in a Global World: 12.00-12.45
11:20 – 11:45	Presentation by Netex Knowledge Factory		13:15 – 14:00	Lunch
11:45 – 13:15	Publishing in Indian languages		14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by HP India
13:15 – 14:00	Lunch		14:20 – 15:20	The Art of the Book	Fiction/History/Research : 14:20 – 15:00
14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by NewsHunt		15:20 – 15:45	Q&A on ISBN Issues
14:20 – 15:45	Open Publishing, Copyright and Copyleft	Face to Face: Printers and Publishers: 14:20 – 16:15	15:45 – 16:15	Tea
15:45 – 16:15	Tea		16:15 – 16:30	Presentation by IppStar	Publishing Environments in Brazil and Sri Lanka: 16:15 – 17:00
16:15 – 17:30	The Business of Graphic Books	Publishing Translated Literature: 16:15-17:00	16:30 – 18:00	e-Publishing in India
17:30 – 19:00	Are There Enough Good Books for Children?	eBook Development and Distribution: 17.30-18.30	18.00 – Publishing Next Industry Awards Presentation Ceremony
20:30 – Networking Dinner at Hotel Sandalwood

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/publishing-next

Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam'

praskrishna — 2016-05-06T15:35:14Z

Practical sessions on using Wiki Malayalam as a medium to preserve the language and promote digital media were held on Thursday, the final day of the two-day workshop on ‘Wiki Malayalam.’

The article was published by New Indian Express on May 6, 2016.

The event was organised jointly by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre in conjuction with Centre for Internet and Society and the Wiki Malayalam Fraternity. The sessions were promising, enriching and a big help for promoting online content through Wiki Malayalam which is still in its infancy, the participants said.

Rahimuddhim Sheik of Centre for Internet and Society, and Manoj Karangimadathil, Wikipedia Fraternity, led the sessions on Wiki technicals. It was followed by an interactive practical session wherein participants learned to be an editor and reporter in Wiki Malayalam. Participants were taught to create articles on sandbox through observation of articles published on Wikipedia.

Various aspects for making Wiki Malayalam presentable such as adding more images to the articles were imparted effectively.

Environmentalist Madhav Gadgil, speaking after inaugurating the two-day workshop,the other day, said, “Authenticity of the information in Wikipedia is often questioned but the discussion page offers the option to point out misleading information and to ensure true information and details.”

The introductory session by Madhav Gadgil incorporated various themes and ideas about the workshop, wikipedia commons, wikipedia projects, and its pillars and principles.

In his session he briefed about how wikipedia gives an in-depth information on particular material on a chronological order and various external references for further extensive reading. As an examples Madhav Gadgil discussed about the Athirapilly Hydroelectric Project in Wikipedia. It sets out a chance for anyone to start a new article on any subject.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-may-6-2016-promoting-online-content-through-wiki-malayalam

Promoting GLAM in Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:27:22Z

We organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa.

Nitika Tandon from CIS and Debanjan from Pune community led the session about Wikipedia and GLAM activities that have been undertaken by our global community since 2010. The talk instilled a lot of enthusiasm in librarians and curators in Goa to start similar programs in their associated institutes.

Some of the institutes attending the session were: Museum of Christian Art, Goa Chitra, Bookworm Library, K.S. Goa State Library, GTL Bicholini, and DFLG District Library. Participants had a lot of interesting questions about starting GLAM projects in English, Marathi and Konkani, starting point of the project, logistical/financial support required to run a GLAM project, etc.

To begin with we'll be meeting Victor Hugos Gomes from Goa Chitra who has shown keen interest to start a GLAM project. Goa Chitra showcases the rich tradition of implements, tools, arts and crafts. Goa Chitra has archived Goa's cultural heritage through documents, books, photographs, handicrafts, electronic recordings, costumes, musical instruments, and artifacts. In the coming weeks we'll be following up with Goa Chitra and more institutions to figure out the possibility of starting new projects in 2013.

Audio

Here's an audio recording of the entire event: http://bit.ly/XEmylE


A GLAM lecture at Goa Central Library

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa

Project Tiger: Wikipedia ropes in locals to contribute articles in Indian languages

praskrishna — 2019-06-05T06:37:55Z

The project has generated content in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odiya and Gujarati.

The article by Tushar Kaushik was published in Economic Times on May 29, 2019.

Hundreds of people from across the country are generating online content in local Indian languages and are even competing in ‘editathons’ that pit contributors of different languages against each other.

While online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s content might be exhaustive in English, its content in Indian languages is limited. Keeping this in mind, Wikipedia’s parent organization Wikimedia Foundation, and Google, roped in Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) - Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K), Wikimedia India Chapter in 2017 and started ‘Project Tiger’ aimed at generating more content in Indian languages. A pilot project was held from December 2017 to May 2018 and another phase of the competition is set to begin next month. The project has generated content in major languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Odia and Gujarati.

The contributors are from varied age groups, some are also from remote, rural areas and they worked from different cities across the country. Two years ago, Durga Prasanna, a journalism student at Alva’s college in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, joined a group of contributors to Wikipedia as part of a requirement from the college. She got an opportunity to participate in ‘Project Tiger’ last year. She generated Wikipedia entries in Kannada and also in the regional languages of Tulu and Konkani. Apart from Durga, seven other students of her college together contributed over 70 articles in Kannada, and a few in Tulu and Konkani, during the ‘editathon’. “We were provided a long list of topics on which not much literature existed in the local languages and among them, we chose topics based on our interests. For example, I wrote articles on ‘psychologist’ and ‘medicinal plants’,” she said.

Another participant, Charan Gill, a 65-year-old former social worker from Patiala, Punjab, was the top contributor in Punjabi. “I wrote 432 articles in a span of two-and-a-half months.However, contributing is not new to me as I have written over 10,000 Wikipedia entries in Punjabi since 2012,” he says.

Gill now works with another Wikimedia project, translating literary classics into Punjabi. He is currently translating some works of 19th century Russian author Ivan Turgenev. Thanksto Gill’s contributions, the Punjabi community of contributors won the prize for producing the most articles — 1,320. In Tamil, 1,241 articles were contributed. A total of 78 articleswere produced in Kannada by eight members.

Gopalakrishna A, community advocate for Kannada language, CIS-A2K, said all written articles were evaluated by a Wikimedia team jury to check if they fulfilled all criteria beforebeing uploaded on Wikipedia set for the contest. Once they fulfil the criteria, the articles are eligible for the prizes. “The main idea was to create content in Indian languages. Thethings most Indian contributors required were internet and hardware support. So participants who had made significant contributions prior to the competition Wikimediaprojects were provided internet connections or laptops Chromebooks,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-may-29-2019-tushar-kaushik-project-tiger

Project Tiger 2019 Coordinator position open

gopala — 2019-06-10T15:29:58Z

To contribute to support, and coordinate of the work of the Project Tiger, we are looking for a creative, dedicated individual to join the team as a coordinator. Please note that women, especially those from socioeconomically marginalized communities, and women who are returning to work after a hiatus will be given preference.

Project Background

In India, Wikipedia exists in 23 Indian languages. All of these Wikipedias are in the early growth phase having a range of articles from few thousands to 100,000+ articles. The typical size of an Indian language community is only to have around or less than 100 people making 5+ edits every month. While there are many social economic and technical reasons for the size and activity of the Indian language communities, learnings from successful projects in the past have demonstrated that we can provide specific interventions to support these communities.

Many active Indian language Wikipedia editors tend to contribute more actively when they are provided support for contributing equipment and internet expenses. This was evident from the success of the pilot program initiated by the Wikimedia India chapter. The recently launched hardware donation program also had a lot of interest from the Indian region.

Wikipedia communities usually show interest participating in contests and edit-a-thons. Well known examples are Wikipedia Asian Month, Punjab edit-a-thon, Women’s history month.

More than 80% edits of all Wikipedias are made by around 2% editors of the community. While many editing promotion activities aspire to attract new editors who are hard to retain, we can sustain more editing activity by empowering existing active editors.

Combining these insights, we propose to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages by launching this pilot program which will (a) support active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and (b) sponsor a language-based contest that aims to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

Responsibilities

The CIS-A2K team is primarily based in the Bangalore office of CIS, and the Project Tiger coordinator, henceforth PTC, will be expected to work out of the same office.

To support and drive outreach of the work being done by the CIS-A2K team, the PTC will be responsible includes but not limited to:

Supporting Project tiger related communication, documentation and coordination
Supporting Project Tiger Chromebook disbursal.
Supporting internet stipend distribution and reimbursement.
Supporting creation and updation of statistics.
Feedback collection and surveys.
Logistics coordination of offline events.

Characteristics of a coordinator

Accountability
Awareness and sensitivity regarding issues of gender and sexuality
Critical appreciation of open knowledge initiatives
Effective communication
Inclusive collaboration
Intellectual curiosity and openness
Respect for diversity
Strong cross-cultural competency

Ability to learn-at-work, especially about the Wikimedia ecosystem

Eligibility criteria

These are the eligibility criteria

Basic criteria

Graduate in any discipline
Fluent in English and excellent communication skills in English and working knowledge (or better) of at least one other Indian language

Technical

Basic understanding of functioning of Wikipedia, and ideally of other Wikimedia projects too

Location and Remuneration

The position is based out of the Bangalore office of CIS.

Monthly remuneration will be decided after selection. Expected monthly remuneration is around INR 28,000. As this is a consultant position, no other benefit is available

Application Process

We invite interested (and eligible) candidates to apply for the position before 10 June 2019 sending us the following documents to tito+ptc2019@cis-india.org (do not miss +ptc2019 part from the email id, it is a filter for us) with “Application for Project Tiger (Coordinator)” as the subject:

Cover letter (2 pages): This should introduce your relevant academic, professional, and other experiences, and describe the kind of work you look forward to do as part of the CIS-A2K team. We strongly recommend reading the Supporting Indian Language Wikipedia Project page[1] on Meta while writing this cover letter, as well as for preparation for the interview to follow (if you are shortlisted for interview).
CV: This should provide details of your academic, professional, and other achievements

Footnotes:

[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Indian_Language_Wikipedias_Program

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/project-tiger-2019-coordinator-position-open